


speak low, if you speak

by percybysshes (kitmarlowed)



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 16:09:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8807425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitmarlowed/pseuds/percybysshes
Summary: When historians write the stories of Victoria Regina this will not be one of them, none of this will. Victoria does not follow Elizabeth’s example.
But Reader, imagine for a moment that she does.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ars_belli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ars_belli/gifts).



When historians write the stories of Victoria Regina this will not be one of them, none of this will. Victoria does not follow Elizabeth’s example.

But Reader, imagine for a moment that she does. That she goes out to get what she wants.

—

It is two o’clock when she receives him for their meeting wearing red. The dress is one of her favourites, deep and with full sleeves and lacing at the neck that does not rise nearly as high as it ought to. She means to devastate him as he has her. Her hair is pinned loosely, and he does not meet her eyes.

“I thought we might take today’s meeting out on a trip,” she says, “so that I might kill two birds with one stone. If you have no objections, of course?”

“Of course, ma’am,” he says, quiet and distracted. “And where might we be going?”

She takes his arm, feels him start a little before he turns to her in askance. “Kensington,” she tells him. “The carriage is waiting, Lord M.”

He says very little during the ride and Victoria’s resolve to be harsh, to be Elizabeth, crumbles with every rain-loud moment, confused, until: “I had thought you did not care for Kensington, ma’am.”

“I do not, not overly,” she says, and he’s watching her now at least. “But I’ve arranged for some of the rooms to be converted into apartments. I want to look over them one last time before I let them go.”

“May I ask why, ma’am?”

Victoria laughs, “Do you know I’m not sure? I suppose last time was so fast. Or perhaps I just want to prove to myself that I shall never have to go back.”

It is just a house, she knows, it cannot hurt her. It did not keep her locked inside it, her mother did, Sir John did. It is just a house but she wants to be rid of it with some finality, to walk through its halls as the woman she is now, not the girl she was then. He has been her witness to that, in a way. Her Lord M, always there to see that Victoria gets through unscathed.

\--

“I take it that you have dismissed the staff for the day,” is all he says, once they are settled, after an hour of wandering through the halls she remembers so vividly whilst discussing the bare bones of the few bills making their way through the Houses at present.

Victoria steels herself for her purpose. She frowns. “You disapprove.”

“Ma’am, I am in no position to disapprove.”

It is more and more difficult to forget that he is a politician even when he speaks to her of other things these days, she thinks. “How very diplomatic of you, Lord Melbourne,” she says.

He raises his eyes to hers at the full title and sighs, “I do think it unwise, ma’am, seeing how closely your movements are followed, how dearly everything you do matters.”

“You still worry for my reputation,” she says, bitterly, “you all do. Mama, Leopold - though he, I think, worries for an altogether more self-serving reason - and you, too. Am I not to be afforded an inch of faith even from you?”

“You have my faith ma’am,” he says, almost confessional, and this she fears may be the crux of the matter: here is where he’ll end all her plans again, but he continues, firmer, “as you always have. But you endanger yourself-“

Victoria raises an eyebrow. “I do not feel that I am in danger at present, Lord Melbourne.” She pauses, listens to the rain as it batters at the walls, watches him again looking everywhere but at her, opts for putting cards down on the table: “I feel angry.”

“Angry, ma’am?” he says, resigned, his eyes to the floor.

“Powerlessness, I have read, will do that to a person,” Victoria says, trying to cling onto the voice he’d helped her hone. Not questioning, anymore, certain and assertive, like Elizabeth.

“You are not powerless-“ he begins, confused and she laughs without mirth, responds, “Am I not? Setting aside the powers of my parliament, for the moment, even personally at every turn I am denied.” She turns to the window, she can just see his shadowed reflection. He watches her without the smile she’s grown used to. She kicks the skirting lightly. “And now I hear that my uncle has sent for my cousins without so much as a word to me. And you-“

He makes a half-step forward at her violence as if he means to catch her and soothe her, but the movement is aborted. "Me, ma'am?"

“Yes, you.” Always you, she thinks and turns to face him, her back to the window and the world. “Why do you make us both miserable?”

“Perhaps,” he says, terse, “since we are quite alone, ma’am, we ought not to argue.”

At this something snaps, the rising tension igniting, and Elizabeth had a temper so why shouldn’t she? Victoria raises her voice, like a command, like a challenge, “On the contrary, Lord Melbourne, I feel now may well be our only chance!”

That something must have snapped within him too as in a rush of movement he’s closer and he’s kissing her and it is nothing she has ever known. Where his hands find her neck her skin is aflame, sparking like the kindling in a grate before the flames consume it. She can feel everything, his thumb over her jaw, how close they both are. Victoria barely notices the need to breathe until he pulls back.

She gasps and, misunderstanding, he retreats, says “I’m sorry, ma’am,” as though he has done something he ought be sorry for. She supposes that he has, though, but it was not this.

“So you have lied to me,” she says, and he looks at her, surprised but awake, sharper now, no longer with the resignation he has carried since Brocket Hall.

“I would hope ma’am that you would at least credit me with honesty,” he protests. The space between them just an arm’s length that seems nothing - she still can feel the sparks where he’d been holding her.

“And I did until very recently,” she replies, smiling despite herself. “Rooks at one turn, orchids the next, and now this.”

“Ma’am-“ he begins but quiets when she takes his hands and puts them back to where they were.

Victoria meets his eye, asks, “Please, Lord Melbourne, don’t be cruel to me.”

He shifts one hand down to her shoulder but leaves the other where she’d put it, pulls her away from the window, out of a clear line of sight. He looks at her as if for the first time again, open and surprised, “God forbid,” he murmurs and obliges her. She brings him in with a hand at his lapel, holding them closer together, allowing herself to be greedy. To want this, openly. She is sick half to death of glances and the quietest courtship in the kingdom.

She wants more, intends to take more and she grabs a fistful of his shirt, guides their mouths together again and this time he doesn’t hold back, doesn’t keep it simple and easy, doesn’t let her go. It’s raw and it’s desperate, and Victoria shifts her hand from his lapel to rest over his heart. She smiles into the kiss, giddy and high, because whatever this turns out to be after the fact, for the moment it is just them. And it feels right.

Victoria’s breathing stutters when Lord M lowers his hands to her waist and she responds by moving her own arms to wind around his shoulders. She hadn’t thought it possible to be closer than they had been but in this, she is content to be wrong. “Lord M,” she breathes, trying not to disturb the spell that’s been cast upon them, "Tell me that whatever happens now we will not be unhapy.”

“I do not know that I can, ma’am,” Lord M teases, running his fingers through her hair where he’d freed it. “If you’ll remember, this is what I have been trying to avoid.”

“So this is to be my fault?” Victoria laughs, moving her arms from his shoulders to rest her hands against his chest. She shoves, lightly, says, “You kissed me!”

He smiles and she takes the time to look at him, notices that once again it isn’t quite meeting his eyes. “No,” she says, firmly, taking his hands from where they’ve fallen back to his sides to draw the both of them away from the wall to a chaise. “Do not retreat again Lord Melbourne. Or at least tell me why you feel the need to.”

“I have already told you why,” he tells her, and now it’s him holding her hands, stroking a thumb across the back of her hand as he did once at Brocket Hall. It is a soothing gesture but Victoria does not want to be soothed, not in the same way as then, not if it means the same thing.

“Yes, yes,” she says, impatient to hide that she is scared, “my ‘heart to someone else’ and rooks mating for life. But you see, Lord M, after all that you came to the masque I held for my uncle and you spoke of inclination.” Her voice wavers on the last words and he looks up from their hands with such naked longing in his eyes, a loss that she cannot let come to pass. She does not want to live a life full of regret. “I will not lose you, Lord M, and you cannot keep yourself from me anymore. Not now, as I know you do not want to.”

“I have never _wanted_ to, ma'am but when I spoke of inclination, I hoped that you would see we cannot do this. You are not in a position to- We must think in the world as it currently is, not how we wish it were.“

“I am the Queen of England, just as Elizabeth was,” Victoria says, a last resort, “surely I can do as I please.”

Lord M smiles ruefully. “Ma’am, it is the fact that you are the Queen that makes what just happened treasonous.”

“I hadn’t realised that your kissing me was a declaration of war, Lord M,” she says, childishly, but then she thinks about it, says, “Nor indeed that it was any other such crime; I am not aware as monarch that I _can_ commit treason.”

He lets go of her hands, rises. She watches him walk, terrified that he’ll leave her, but he is only lighting candles. She hadn’t even noticed it getting dark. Lord M turns back to her, says, “You cannot, ma’am, but I can.”

“If I possessed such a power I would pardon you,” Victoria says, standing. “For every crime done or not yet done.”

“Then, ma’am, perhaps it is well that you cannot alone do so,” Lord M smiles but it is bitter now, turned in on itself. “My crimes don’t bear pardoning.”

“And what crimes might they be?”

The look he gives her is enough to catch her breath, dark and heated. “Sedition,” he says, a ragged whisper of a word. “I have countenanced — to utter such things would compound them. You deserve more than my sins.”

She looks at him, the candlelight flickering over his features, setting his odd, beautiful eyes alight. “I’ll thank you to not legislate what I deserve, Lord M.”

“Ma’am, please. This was a mistake and you cannot allow me to make it worse.”

“Oh but I want you to make it worse,” Victoria says, gaining ground, close enough to reach him again. “I believe I have said it before: it is what I most desire-“

Lord M kisses her with returned urgency, sending that same fire back over her skin and coursing through her veins. He crushes her to him and she goes, winding her arms about his shoulders and holding on. This time he is bolder — perhaps the fire under the thread of his self-restraint has finally done its job, dutiful as she has been with the tending of it — and his hands begin to wander over the red of her dress. She gasps as his fingers brush the exposed skin atop her breasts.

“Stop this now,” Lord M says, hoarse and honest against her lips, his voice lacks the conviction of what he says. “Before—“

“I cannot,” she says, breathless. “I would not for all the world.”

He moves to kiss her throat. “It did not end well for Elizabeth and Leicester,” he warns. “Their story closed on betrayal.”

Somewhere a clock chimes, reality coming for Victoria as it did for Perrault’s cinder-girl. Lord M releases her, slowly, as if reluctance is a physical ache he must battle through, “They will wonder where you are, ma’am.”

Victoria leans back with a sigh. “ _They_ can wonder all night for all I care. And we shall have to do it right, then, Lord M, and not fall into the same traps.”

“You should be back at the palace and I,” Lord M hesitates, his gaze to the air beside her, “well I have a great deal of reading to do-“

“Read with me,” she says, “at the palace. You’ll be dining with me anyway, for I do so love seeing uncle Leopold squirm in that way.” Victoria stands, a rustle of skirts and fabric as she leans down to pull him up with her. “Bring your reading. They cannot say anything untoward is happening when we are chaperoned.”

“Alright,” he says, and she knows that the agreement is not just to the reading by his smile, the way he looks at her. Lord M laughs, quietly, “And when Leopold, your mother, the country hound you to be married?”

“Those decisions, Lord M, are prerogative powers that cannot be exercised for me. Let the future be for now.” She still has his hands in hers. “I am happy, aren’t you?”

“It will difficult,” says Lord M, but he is smiling as he used to, fond and bright and _hers_.

Queen Victoria kisses the man she loves, says, “And it will be worth it.”

The stars may even shift a little.

—

_Spent maj. of the day with dear Lord Melbourne at Kensington and all is now settled. He is good for me and therefore will be good for the country, even - as I know will soon come to pass - when he is not my Prime Minister; with him at my side I know I shall be a great Queen. it is with this conviction that I say tosh to those who would fight us. I have made my choice and it is mine to make. Rooks indeed! well ‘I defy augury’_

 

**Author's Note:**

> happy yuletide!


End file.
